I keep seeing hilarious quotes in peoples' sigs that look like it comes from a chat of some sort. I always wanted to talk to some of you cool cats on the internet. And I've always wanted to see how it was like in the IRC chats, but I never got how to do it. Can someone help me here? I'll tell God about you and tell him about how helpful you were to me when I needed it.

IRC is a free program, you don't need to purchase anything! When you start the program up for the first time, you will notice it will say evaluation, this doesn't matter, the program will work just like it always did after that period is up, you'll just have an occasional popup asking you to buy it.

3. Next open mIRC. After you go past the evaluation part of IRC, you'll come up to the "mIRC Options." Fill out the criteria, [full name doesn't have to be exact or even full, nickname is what your chat name will be, this is always interchangeable, and alternative is in case someone always has your name in the room your in.

After you fill that info out, I would strongly recommend setting up a preform. A preform will auto log you in every time you press "connect." It's very easy and I'll explain the steps below!

In the same mIRC Options box, you'll see a large white field with multiple categories and sub-categories. You need to be under the "CONNECT" category, and the "OPTIONS" sub-category.

After you clicked "OPTIONS" you'll notice the main content on the page changed. There's some radio [check] boxes that are pretty self explanatory. Under that you will see a button that says "PERFORM" which is what you will need to click next.

After you click on "PERFORM" you will see one single radio [check] box that states "ENABLE PERFORM ON CONNECT" and this box will need to be checked.

After that, you will see a large white box that states "PERFORM COMMANDS" and this is where logging in is MUCH MUCH easier.

The way you log into mIRC is typing a command to the program, this command is

Code:

/authserv auth username password

and should be doing this every time you open IRC.

Well, to have IRC do all this for you, every time you press "CONNECT" you just have to put a few very easy commands in the "PERFORM COMMANDS" field.

BOLD = command, normal font explains what it does [you just type the commands into the field like normal].

Code:

/authserv auth username password This will log you in user the username and password you register in step 2!
//mode $me +x This will not show your IP which isn't entirely important but some people prefer it, I do.
/join #channelname This will automatically join a channel or chat room on connection. So if you want to join the the channel with all the guys from this forum, you would type /join #NFLDraftCountDown.

After you have all of that filled out, you can click "OK" and when you get back to the mIRC Options page, you go back to Connect Category [no sub-category] which is the default page when you open IRC and click "CONNECT" and IRC will auto log you in, auto join #NFLDraftCountdown and/or any other channel you'd want and hide you IP.

If you accidentally left that page and don't know how to get back to it, just go up to "TOOLS" [with the File, View, Favorites, etc groupings] and then click "OPTIONS" and you'll be back to where I stated above!

It's a small setup time, should take only a few minutes at max and will make IRC much much easier to use.

Some basics to get you by:

If a user has an "@" in front of their name [ex @DG] that means they an admin at that Channel. If the user has a "+" means that user has voice status or peon status [it's like being a regular or in some server the only way you can chat is with that voice status].

If you have any question about IRC or didn't understand anything, need additional help, questions, whatever, feel free to post it or to PM me. I'm very familiar with IRC and use it daily [rarely in the NFLDC rooms though -- I keep saying I'll drop in....].

Good Luck and Have Fun!!!

~Jason.

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